


Hydrangea

by namio



Series: Zinnia + Azalea [2]
Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Gen, Natalie and Mikleo supporting each other after everything the fic, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-13 23:59:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7991116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namio/pseuds/namio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just as Elysia is home, Elysians are family. Mikleo is there for Natalie, and she's there for him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hydrangea

Despite how fractured the remnants of the old life feels, Elysia is home.

Mikleo knows that everyone is consciously working to make it feel that way. After everything that happened, it’s hard to believe that anything could ever be right again. So Mikleo set out back to help Rose, all those years ago—and now he’s back. Everyone had all clamoured to help him clean up the houses, when he arrived—had made him dinner, told him that they want to welcome him home tonight, so he should rest because he went a long way for a long while and should rest. A month in, and it’s almost as if nothing has changed.

Well, there’s the gaping absence of someone on his right side, but it’s been decades, and—and while it’s not the same, and won’t be the same, he knows he’s not alone. Everyone pointedly looks away from Gramps’ empty house during the first week. And he’s coping with that one, too—it’s kind of harder, thinking of Gramps, because he’s _gone_ , and it hurts knowing just how much he loved them, how much he cares about him and Sorey and Elysia, but Mikleo’s not alone in that, either. It makes it somewhat easier. Not much, but, but he’s trying. They’re trying. They’re all working to make this work, to make it right, to get back up.

Before he went to that fateful journey, Elysia was home. Decades later, somehow, despite the fact that he possibly spent more time away from here, it’s even more of a home.

Dusk is simply a color this high in the mountains: with the clouds obscuring everything beyond the cliffs, it’s just the dance between light and dark, indigo turning layers and layers lighter into a dusty rose. Behind him, in the village, the genial atmosphere is warm like a hearth—muted, but there, nonetheless, a calming presence. Loanna and Shiron are cooking, today. These days, everyone mostly eats little, but together—they all gather in Gramps’ house and circle the fireplace, and usually, they have stew or roasted meat. Mikleo always makes soft serve ice cream, when it’s his time. Everyone universally agrees that it’s gotten better, after all these years. Mikleo never tells them this, but it’s his comfort, now: between Sorey and Rose, hard times aren’t rare, and ice cream becomes both a physical and an emotional item of sorts, grounding him. He wants to share it with them.

Which is sort of why he’s here, honestly.

“It’s going to be cold soon,” Natalie says, voice gentle as she stares off into the vividly hued cliffs. The breeze, softened by Shiron’s blessing, tussles the grass as though a curious child. “You should get back to the others; I’ll join you in a moment.”

Mikleo sits beside her instead, one knee bent and pulled close to his body. “They’re still cooking,” he says. “Stew, too. It’s going to take a while.”

“Ah.”

Natalie has been melancholic for so long, she’s become one with the sunset. Her deep blue dress is customary of most of the water seraphim, but in the dying light it’s a forlorn indigo, and the curls of white on her dress are wisps of faint clouds, spread out too thin to show its true color. Ever since Mason, whenever he’s back in Elysia, she’s always in this spot—behind the large, protruding stone of the spring, tucked behind the comforting shade it cast every day. And Mikleo knows that she’s terrified, inside—and he knows that she’s somehow still holding on to something, because it’s been decades since she worries and despairs but she’s still here, she’s still Natalie, and she’s still that older sister Mikleo has who taught him how to freeze water and yoghurt and how to turn cream into a delicacy. Things changed—her disposition changed, but she’s still Natalie.

They don’t talk much, these days. It’s not because of anything; it’s just hard to find a topic, because Mikleo knows she knows what he really wants to say, when it’s her—it’s like a cross between _how are you?_ and _how do I get through this?_ , and he knows that she knows that there’s no real answer to either of them. So he sits instead, watching the sun die, blots of ink descending from the uppermost part of the sky.

“You’re honestly an inspiration to me, Mikleo,” Natalie murmurs, burying the words into her knees as she curls forward. “I want to be as strong as you are, one day.”

Mikleo blinks, though it doesn’t help him see any clearer.

Her gaze is on him when she continues, voice soft with the air of the night. “It’s just… You’ve been through so much, and yet you’re so young, but somehow you’re still strong and kept going on even though it must have hurt—I just. I can only hope to one day have that kind of heart.”

A shudder goes down his spine like a crack on ice and Mikleo takes in air, tries to breathe, clear his words. Natalie looks away. Mikleo’s hand, previously hanging off near his knee, reaches for the grass.

For a moment, only the rhythmic rustles of winds on the expanse of grass fill the air, like how the pulsing of stars are the only voices in the sky.

“It’s,” Mikleo starts, grasps, gathers, “I.”

Her eyes melt more, turning into a soft shade of anguish. “Sorry—I didn’t mean it in a. I meant it more like. Oh, I’m sorry, Mikleo. I didn’t intend to put even more weight on your back—I know you already have so many expectations on your shoulders. It’s just that I—you give me hope.”

“I don’t know how you could even think that,” Mikleo admits, “but it’s all right. I’m just glad to know that you’re at least feeling… well enough to think that.”

It’s a weight, a weight that perhaps had it been someone else, he’d be unwilling to bear, but—but it’s Natalie, and she had listened to him when he, at age thirteen, admitted that he’s scared of losing Sorey to death, to people, to greater, loftier dreams, and she’s family. He’ll carry this one for her. One day, he knows, he must stop—but for now, he will do what he can.

“Sorry,” she says, but there’s a twinkle of something brighter in her expression. “You just remind me that, well, age is just the length of time you’ve been alive. It doesn’t really… say much about what happens in it—about experience. About wisdom. About strength. You _learn_ those things. And I think you’ve learned far more about those than I ever did. And it’s… It’s sort of sobering, but freeing, in a way. I want to learn.”

Mikleo doesn’t really know how to answer, so he doesn’t. Instead, he leans a bit over and bumps their shoulder, and Natalie sits up a bit straighter to reciprocate, a faint smile in her eyes. They sit in companionable silence and she, after a while, reaches out, arm wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him close.

It’s been a while since anyone initiates that big a gesture to him. It reminds him of his childhood, where despite the fact that Sorey’s brand of affection far outshone anyone else’s, Mikleo still found it normal and comforting to hug, nuzzle and sit on his family members. These days, there is no one to fist bump with anymore.

Mikleo sometimes thinks he’s strong enough to get through this. The other times, he’s not quite sure. But he has to try.

“I’m still learning, too,” he murmurs back. “I think we can get somewhere someday.”

Her cheek is on the top of his head, tussling his hair, and he can feel her nod. “I think so, too. Just—Mikleo?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re here for you. Elysia is here if you ever need us to be there.”

Despite the bright pillar of light blocking out most of the night’s stars, there are still faint blinks from the distant horizons, muted and impossible to see without straining the eyes, but undeniably there. The clean air of the mountains is always something Mikleo sorely misses once he’s down under, and in an early spring like this, it carries that distinct scent of life—it’s that sort of thing that makes him think of rolling down a slope and getting grass stains and running at night to Gramps’ house, both giggly and terrified as he and Sorey got themselves scared silly from telling each other stories. It’s a part of his childhood that he never realized was one. It’s part of his childhood home.

“I know,” he says instead. Eyes closing, his other hand grasps hers, squeezing lightly. “We’re here for you, too.”

Mason had been hard enough, but then Gramps, too. And Sorey. It’s been a hard few decades for everyone, but Natalie wore and still wears her fears on her sleeves, and that sometimes makes it harder, especially with how malevolence starts, usually. And the thing is, he gets by because he has everyone’s support. It’s—it’s no replacement for the sort of companionship Sorey provides, which transcends so many things it’s honestly impossible to truly measure the depth of the hole his absence left, but he has the others. Lailah and Rose and Zaveid and, maybe, sort of, when she stops jabbing him, Edna, and later on even the Sparrowfeathers and Alisha and Sergei are no Sorey, but they’re there, and their companionship matters. He has people back home, who from his birth have been nothing if not loving, making sure he’s well looked after and fed and comfortable even though the foundations of their world has been shaken hard enough it might have crumbled mountains. Elysia is a family. It’s a family to Natalie, too.

“I know,” she whispers, voice trembling. “Sometimes, I thought, it’s like—it’s. They’re here, but they’re—they’re… I sometimes feel like I’m overreacting. Gramps would’ve called for me for a talk, had it gone on for long enough. But I just, I—for so long, I thought it would have lasted for a lot longer. Elysia is isolated, and barring… barring Camlann, it never occurred to me that. That we’d be attacked. That Mason would… die. That. That Gramps would. That Sorey would have to—“

Natalie stops, shaking, and presses a kiss against his hair. “I’m sorry.”

Mikleo tilts his head slightly up, squeezing her fingers with his. “You don’t need to apologize. We’re here for each other, aren’t we?”

“I suppose we are.” A contemplative pause. “We are.”

“I think,” Mikleo says when the sounds of crickets and wildlife end up filling the gaps between words instead, “I’ve been preparing for things to change since forever.”

Because Sorey was human, he was going to go, one way or the other. And back then—and perhaps now, still—Sorey is an entire part of his world, as silly and childish as it might be. It’s hard, trying to convey what Sorey means to him—there’s just too much, and it sounds like a fairytale, sometimes, like it’s an exaggeration of the real thing. In moments of doubt—real, crippling doubt, ones that make him gasp and wonder and worry and get Edna to rap her knuckles on his head—he thought it might’ve been just that: an exaggeration borne of escaping memories and a tendency for the past to take on a rosy hue the further back it stretches.

It’s not, really. Mikleo tries not to doubt.

“Ah, yeah,” Natalie says. “You were too young to worry about those things, but you did so anyway. It hurt Gramps to have to say it, you know. I think it hurt everyone. But, still…”

“I don’t—I don’t regret it,” Mikleo says. It gave him a chance to be helpful to Sorey and join him. “It probably would’ve been worse if nobody told me to… prepare myself.”

Her hand squeezes his shoulder. “No young child should be forced to prepare themselves for that kind of thing.”

Mikleo shakes his head. “Life is life. It doesn’t really follow our perception of ought and should.”

And regretting something he didn’t previously regret is a good way to go down the path of despair and malevolence, he knows—Lailah told him that. Lailah, who had to live with memories of Michael and how the one stumble he made was one that dragged the rest of Glenwood with him, Lailah, who in thirty short years had two Shepherds, both of whom are gone too soon, one way or the other. Lailah, who had lived for so long and saw so many people suffer in the path of righteousness. Lailah, whose existence is deeply intertwined with the burdens and tribulations the title of Shepherd brings.

She still is holding on. She knows more about holding on than a lot of people, be it human or seraphim.

“I suppose it doesn’t.” Natalie lets out a deep sigh, taking the air out of everything within her that it seems like she is deflated, now. “At first I thought Elysia would never change, but then it did. I don’t know why I still expect things to be all right.”

“I—“ Mikleo starts, but the words are hard to grasp, and they’re harder to weave into something clear, something coherent, too. “All right is—all right is what you make it out to be.”

It’s a lesson he learned from the many humans he met during the travels. All right is Gododdin continuing despite the harshness of life in such an arid place, persevering somehow for so long that a Trial Shrine was made there, centuries ago. All right is the Sparrowfeathers and the Scattered Bones living on the road, taking homes in their hearts rather than on bricks and stones. All right is Alisha relenting in some issues to let other issues more important to her be addressed. All right is working with what you have, because at least you _have_ that.

Natalie laughs. It’s a soft, confused sound. “See—you’ve learned so much more than I have.”

“Learning is never constricted by age.”

And there’s a smile. “You’re right. I should—I should learn, really. It’s… I’m sorry that it ends up being _you_ comforting _me_ when it ought to be the other way around, but—“

“Natalie.”

Her hand rubs his shoulders. “—I’m here for you in other ways.”

Mikleo rubs his eyes. “I know everyone is here for me.”

Sometimes, when he feels particularly lonely and wishing for the sort of companionship no one awake and aware can really give him, he pretends that the light is there for him, too. It’s such a sad thing to contemplate, and he shakes his head whenever he wakes up the next morning, but it’s something he does, and he has to admit that he does do it—denial is bad for a seraph, anyway, and it’s not like anyone knows. The thing is just—the thing is, a beam is really not anything more than light, and it might have reasons for existing but not reasons to exist, and it’s really, really a poor replacement for the actual conversation and banter and love Sorey gives. It doesn’t even help him remember Sorey. It’s just white.

Sorey is pure, yes, but he’s more like the purity of vivid hues more than the incandescence of the stars. He drooled in sleep, and he didn’t do grace as much as he tripped his way into charisma.

Even after all these years, even after he is starting to wonder and question and squeeze his eyes too hard to conjure pictures and memories, he’s still both in love and infuriated by that. He just hopes he doesn’t forget. Realistically, he knows that he _will_ forget. He was too young, back then, to remember most of their childhood years. Reality is terrifying.

The winds pick up. In the atmosphere, water rises in anticipation—the start of a thunderstorm.

There was a time when Sorey thought thunderstorms were Gramps chiding him for his stunts of the day. Back then, Mikleo thought that there was no way that was the truth—Gramps couldn’t possibly have known about what they’d done back in the ruins. These days, he is pretty sure that Gramps knew all along. Thunderstorms, though, wasn’t exactly how he did things.

“I think Gramps want us to go back to the others,” Natalie says. Mikleo blinks and looks up to the sky, trying to search for that spark. The moon blink back at him in askance.

“Oh?”

Natalie laughs. It’s a short, muffled thing, but it’s better than what she’s been lately, and Mikleo supposes that’s more than everyone could ask for. “Gramps didn’t control the weather, but sometimes he adds a little bit of… urgency to the rain, back when you were young. Though before that, both of you actually were lulled by them. Both of you slept like logs when you were babies and a storm was raging outside.”

It’s then that Mikleo realizes a flaw in his previous way of thinking—he’s not alone in remembering.

It takes a few moments for him to gather both the words and the courage, and in that time, the clouds crackle like an approval. “Natalie?”

“Yes?”

I’m scared of forgetting Sorey. “Years down the line, will you tell me about our childhood?”

“Of course.”

“I just thought… Because I was too young back then. If you remember years down the line, I kind of hope that…”

That the others don’t forget, because Mikleo isn’t sure he will be able to hold onto things that are already too vague to be concrete events. He’s not asking for anyone to remember the shade of green Sorey’s eyes are or whether he’s really as awfully toned as those depictions of him people are starting to make up, these days. They always changed depending on the lighting, anyway—under different elevation of the sun, they take on different parts of life. Usually, Mikleo remembers them as grass.

What’s more terrifying, though, is the idea of forgetting what they shared—of forgetting the real reason he’d wait forever for Sorey.

“You and Sorey are the life of Elysia,” Natalie says, a smile in her words. “Elysia started living when both of you came into our lives. We will remember. I can promise you that much.”

And in a flash of comforting light, the prelude to the storm starts, and Natalie moves back. Mikleo does, too, brushing his pants as he stands up. Natalie takes his offered hand, and they stand there for a while, lingering to watch the rolls of clouds and the sky and the mountains, tasting the electricity in the air. They will return, soon—for a moment longer, though, they watch.

“We’ll be okay, Gramps,” Mikleo tells the sky. It rumbles in return: a low, reverberating sound, rippling into the depths of his chest like the comforts of a lullaby.

* * *

 

They go back to Gramps’ house together, Natalie with her arm around her little brother. Shiron warms the food up again and they all finally start eating, storm right outside, close to home.

The fire crackles, beating like a heart in the hearth.

**Author's Note:**

> elysia is the highlight of my day whenever the game lets me go back, and being unable to rush back to tell them about things that happened in the plot (even if it's just in my head, bc they didn't put THAT much dialogue variations that'd be crazy) prior to gododdin hurt my soul so have this


End file.
